A Cup of Tea Steeps Into a Movie Role

“There was no auditioning,” Ms. Joyce said of her introduction, over a steaming cup, to the notion that she might play Hilde in Ibsen’s “The Master Builder,” staged by Mr. Gregory and translated by Mr. Shawn. “We just talked for a half-hour about the play and where I thought I was in my life. And then he was like, ‘Would you like to do it?’ ”

As quickly as she could answer, “Sure,” Ms. Joyce found herself on a yearlong odyssey of languorous rehearsals — with Mr. Shawn playing the title role of Solness, and Mr. Gregory watching their interaction “with the wonder of a child” — easing into invitation-only performances at the Pen and Brush in Greenwich Village.

“This is a dream come true,” Mr. Gregory announced at the closing-night party, adding to Ms. Joyce’s shock, “Jonathan Demme is going to make it into a movie.” The result, “A Master Builder” opens Wednesday.

In a recent interview Ms. Joyce, 31, a plush-lipped Chicago-born ingénue who recently played a provocative nanny in the Atlantic Theater Company production of Nancy Harris’s “Our New Girl,” spoke with Kathryn Shattuck about the process of translating the play for the screen. These are excerpts from their conversation.

Q. This Hilde seems pretty different from the one in the original play.

A. I read the original translation and I was like [inhales sharply] I don’t know how one would play that part. She struck me as a maniacal fan in love with this guy she had this experience with when she was 12. In the end, she drives him to kill himself, and that to me didn’t add up. I finally decided that she’s a young woman who developed her identity around meeting this man and wants to hold him accountable to all the promises he made, and wants him to be as great as she thinks he is.

She seems a little unhinged.

Totally. I think that she is unbridled desire and passion and unapologetic in a way that is a little maniacal. But it’s not until the scene with Julie Hagerty [playing Solness’s wife] that she’s like, “Whoa, this has repercussions on other human beings.” So whatever kind of naïve blinders she had on going into the thing are taken away, and then the play really elevates into this kind of poetic world, where they’re talking about castles in the sky.

Was it unnerving to work with theater veterans like Mr. Gregory and Mr. Shawn?

They are like my two iconic dads. It still shocks me that I know them. But they are such generous, lovable, hilarious, moral people that they just put you at ease.

And then being directed by Mr. Demme?

I was really intimidated going in, because I’m such a fan, but he was generous about giving us what we needed — but also pushing us. I’d never been a lead in a film before, so I didn’t understand when he said, “No, try it a bunch of different ways, so we can edit it.” At first, I was like, “Wait, you want me to do it differently every time?” So he was patient with me in that regard.

Your scenes with Mr. Shawn are quite intimate, and your emotions turn on a dime: hysterical laughter one moment, eyes welling with tears the next.

It was from rehearsing that way — just Wally and me in a room together for a long time. We got comfortable, and I felt very secure in that. But now that I’ve seen the film a few times, I’m like, “I cannot watch it again.” I just don’t think it’s healthy to stare at one’s face in close-up for two hours. Part of the wonderful thing about theater is that I never have to watch myself perform.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page AR3 of the New York edition with the headline: A Cup of Tea Steeps Into a Movie Role. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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